Total Rating: 
***3/4
Opened: 
March 22, 2007
Ended: 
April 1, 2007
Country: 
USA
State: 
Kentucky
City: 
Louisville
Company/Producers: 
Actors Theater of Louisville
Theater Type: 
Regional
Theater: 
Actors Theater of Louisville
Theater Address: 
316 West Main Street
Phone: 
(502) 584-1205
Running Time: 
75 min
Genre: 
Comedy
Author: 
Conceived by Whit MacLaughlin and Alice Tuan; Text by Alice Tuan; created by New Paradise Laboratories
Director: 
Whit McLaughlin
Review: 

After seeing Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacular, the sixth play in the 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, you're likely to have second thoughts about taking part in one of those pre-nuptial rituals. But do, by all means, see Batch, performed in an arena in The Connection nightclub downtown by an incredible Philadelphia group called New Paradise Laboratories, who created it. New Paradise director Whit MacLaughlin conceived the piece with Los Angeles playwright Alice Tuan, who did the text.

Watching those gender-switching men and women (three of either) agonize over decisions to make for the parties and then putting themselves through the events as they drink too much, share drugs, and joke about sex will bring shocks of recognition even as you're chortling at the chaos.

Claudine Longet's dreamy recording of "The Look of Love," sets the perfect mood for a boisterous, visually entertaining take on a familiar rite of passage.

At play's opening, the bride, named Betsy Competitive (the delightfully watchable McKenna Kerrigan, who resembles Meryl Streep), is alone on stage, turning slowly and smiling as her engagement ring sparkles on one hand while with the other she keeps her fingers crossed behind her back.

The groom, Taggis, sensitively played by Aaron Mumaw, paces and pauses to stare straight ahead as his image appears on three huge video screens. Jorge Cousineaeu's video designs are striking.

Kerrigan later becomes a man named Wesley at the bachelor party, while Mumaw, though hairy-chested, is a woman in a low-cut red dress at the bachelorette do.

The production, enhanced by Rosemarie McKelvey's costumes, is highly physical with all the actors throwing themselves about the area and drawing admiring laughter for their cleverly choreographed and awe-inspiring ways of dropping into or emerging from a hole in the platform.

Some parts of Batch defy understanding, but don't ask. Just go along with that surreal time when all except Betsy and Taggis become rams called "Saynads." And relax when a hermaphroditic clairvoyant named Myclops, who asks to be called Mike, takes the bridal couple through her cave. Accept, too, every fake penis that's brandished by a three-man Pizza Family of Italian buffoons.

What's a bachelor/ette party without a stripper? Here you get two. One is a long-legged Marie A. Antoinette in French period dress whose erotic poses are sensational. The other is a transsexual named Special K, who used to be a woman. His specialty is doing "straight boys before they marry" -- giving them "one last chance, just to make sure."

The New Paradise Laboratories website notes that the group's productions investigate the human body and its capacity for physical expression, onstage and in life. The works "tend to value wild humor, shock, a concern for history, a muscular visual sensibility, and a fascination with the utopian impulse." That's what Batch certainly delivers. 

Cast: 
McKenna Kerrigan (Betsy Competitive, the bride; Wesley), Jeb Kreager (Matty Jay, former maid of honor; Smoak), Lee Ann Etzold (Betty Lee, the soon-to-be maid of honor; Lars), Matt Saunders (Becky Steem; Chet), Aaron Mumaw (Mara Faye; Taggis), Mary McCool (Mary Bette; Mike)
Technical: 
Set: Matt Saunders; Costumes: Rosemarie McKelvey; Lighting: Brian J. Lilienthal; Sound: Whit MacLaughlin; Video: Jorge Cousineaeu; Properties: Ron Riall; Stage Manager: Nancy Pittelman; Dramaturg: Adrien-Alice Hansel
Critic: 
Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed: 
March 2007